Posts Tagged ‘defence mechanism’

I was out with Nick last night in Soho and we were discussing dating, and Nick said something along the lines of “I really hate the term straight-acting. One guy said to me that ‘I only go out with straight-acting guys’. How can a gay man be straight-acting when he is sucking another man’s cock?” True point, true story.

But what Nick took issue most with was the idea of being “straight-acting“. Now, I think when we first start dating someone, it’s not only normal but necessary not to give everything away and be totally honest and 100% forthcoming. At the end of the day, you have to keep something back for you until you are sure that you can trust the other person, that you can let them in. But to hold back something so fundamental as who you truly are, whether that be somebody butch, flamboyant, hard or sensitive – it goes from a defence mechanism to becoming a lie.

It comes down to denying yourself in order to conform to a heterocentric society. Or choosing not to, and to be yourself, warts and all. Whether you are macho, feminine, asexual, whatever. Moreover: a lot of straight people are very welcoming of LGBT people. Rumour has it that some don’t even care what your sexuality might be, but prefer to value you as a whole individual! I am proud to count some of my closest friends in that category.

A considerable proportion of society is only heterocentric because that attitude has lasted for generations upon generations, and change takes time – but I believe that a reasonable amount of the public is trying to and starting to effect this change. How are we supposed to facilitate and encourage this change if some gay people want to date ‘straight’ men and women who are on the down low? What kind of message does this send out, that we are not proud and confident in our own skins to stand up and be counted? Are some gay people only happy to play the underdog, complaining that they are discriminated against and treated unequally, but then not comfortable enough to stand up and be counted, to be out with themselves and demand that equal footing? We need to decide whether our sexuality is a scarlet letter or a badge of honour – we can’t pick and choose.

I am not talking about teenagers coming to terms with their sexuality; these are grown adults who are displaying more backward thinking than a fair number of their straight counterparts. It is so important to be who you are, and to be honest and try to embrace this. For most of us, this task is a life-long work in progress and to truly know yourself takes decades of fierce, fearless introspection. I am not there yet – I do not claim to have everything figured out. But to deny such a major component such as your sexuality – this is something we should be proud of! Without letting our sexuality be our only defining characteristic, we – straight, gay, bisexual, trans and everything in between – must be proud of the ability to love, to connect, make someone else feel good sexually, romantically, platonically, whatever. Labels should never prevent us from being happy, so they often have to busted out of the way. So I cannot fathom why some people are putting themselves in a box. Be true to you!

I decided to name this post after my favourite track from Britney Spears’ album Blackout because it kinda sums up how I’ve been feeling. I think at times we all get the temptation to feel sorry for ourselves, but in a way this self-pity is something we can rationalise and yet something we know we shouldn’t do (or don’t need to feel). There’s a tension between appreciating the good things in your life, and then seeing how you could still improve your life and all the faults that exist within it. I will explain with illustrations from my very own personal life. 😉

With the last person I officially dated, L, I knew all along that I wasn’t really into the relationship. And it was all too clear just how into me he was. On the surface, he was kind, attentive, considerate and charming, if a little bit childlike (despite being 3 years my senior). But I knew, deep down, that I didn’t feel for him how he obviously felt for me, and my failing was not putting a stop to it and nipping it in the bud. Instead, I kept going hoping that my feelings would grow to match his, and perhaps accepting my caution at first as a defence mechanism after previous bad experiences. But finally, it became clear to me that I had to break up with him, though I ended up doing it by accident… I sent him a text message I meant to send to my friend, saying that I couldn’t take the situation anymore and that I had to break up with L, as it was making me ill. So L received this and went insane, and we had a breakup-via-text that I never meant to initiate. I apologised and explained that it was all a mistake, and sending a text message to the wrong person happens all the time. It’s an easy mistake to make, and all my friends have done it just as I now have. And yet, be it out of hurt or out of anger, my apology was rejected because L and “his friends” (whom I never met and who never met me) decided that I had decided to send the text on purpose. I had nothing more to say, because I had attempted to apologise, and I wasn’t going to pursue L when I’d wanted us to be apart anyway. I will always regret the way that it happened, but I suppose I got what I wanted. And yet, despite it being an accident, for weeks afterwards I felt like a bad person, like the guilty one because I had caused pain to someone else. Perhaps because I knew I should have broken things off before that point. I was angry because my friends, whom L had met, had been nothing but nice to him, whereas I’d never met his friends and yet they were perfectly ready to pass judgment on me and analyse non-existent reasons for my text message, rather than take my apology at face value. So I was irritated, and I was relieved, but mostly I felt guilty for hurting someone. And yet, it was an escape from a face-to-face scenario (which I was planning that week, but considering L’s reaction over text messages, perhaps breaking up in person would have meant that he’d caused a scene in the café – lucky escape?) and I never had to see him or hear from him again. Is that really what I wanted? I guess so. So why should I be sad?

For anyone who read my detective blog yesterday, J did come back on msn. Although he didn’t really change his monosyllabic style of talking, he did seem a little bit more open. He maintained that his msn was crashing (I don’t believe this for a second) but that he wasn’t annoyed or embarrassed or anything, so fine. And this is the funny thing: even though he was the one perpetrating a sort of deception, I once again felt guilty (I obviously inherited the Catholic guilt from my mother’s family, despite not being Catholic myself) because I’d unceremoniously uncovered his secret – however shabbily-kept – and confronted him with it. I felt like I’d embarrassed him, because there is nothing wrong with being direct and asking for sex online if you so wish; there are plenty who are only too happy to oblige. So I tried to keep things light and smooth things over. Why did I feel the need to do this? I wasn’t the one who had tried to hide my identity, who had effectively advertised for people to come into my house and rape me, who had pretended that I didn’t want people to see my body. All I’d done was uncover that J had done these things, and yet in a way I felt like I had robbed him of a tiny piece of dignity. Perhaps that was a part of his façade, and I guess I felt like I’d ripped it away. But why so guilty? If it had been me, the person wouldn’t have given it a second thought… So why should I feel sad?

I decided to return B’s text, and he replied after a while wishing me luck, and saying he had work all week also. I thought I might as well bite the bullet, since I’ve all but lost interest, and asked him whether he had received my invite to the cinema and how come he was never on msn anymore (we used to have really long, intimate conversations on there at first). Again, no reply as of yet, and I don’t even expect one. I don’t think that B is a malicious person, and I like him, but I’m not under any delusions – he’s a little bit crazy. He doesn’t think anything of only replying to people when he chooses, and one minute he can’t leave me alone, the next he disappears off the face of the earth. It makes no sense; and yet I anticipated that something like this would happen. I’m not surprised, because my paranoia once again was proved right. I’m not going to waste my time pursuing somebody who can’t communicate, and I’m not going to expect a high level of friendship from someone until they show they can be more consistent and reliable. And yet, I feel guilty once again: what did I do to drive him away? Am I ugly to him? Am I boring? Does he just not want to go on a date? My heart hurts and the guilt fades all too slowly, despite the fact that I know in my head that I should aim higher and not get strung out on people who already irritate me with their fluctuating attention spans. So why should I be sad?

I know that in this blog I’ve focused a fair amount of the fact that I’m not where I thought I would be at this point in my life, having graduated from Oxford University with a good degree. As a child and a teenager, I always seemed to do the right things, and despite never being the richest or the most popular at school, I was someone who seemed to have everything going for me. And I can’t complain; I’ve lived in Spain, I’ve studied at a prestigious university, I’ve paid off my overdraft and credit cards, I’ve been a retail manager, I have a close family and close friends, I write, sing and produce my own music, I’m starting a new university course in September which will hopefully give me the extra kick I need to get a job at Connexions that I will enjoy. It’s hard to believe in myself when life takes me on a different course to what I intended, but despite this year being a bit less exciting than what I’d intended, I suppose I shouldn’t waste my time feeling down. Half of me feels like I’m stuck in a rut, but I know it won’t last for long. I try to keep in mind all of the achievements I’ve made and the positive things, and compared to others, I guess I’m pretty lucky (though I won’t complain to be luckier!). So why should I be sad?